Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion
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Opinion page editor Rick Holmes and other writers blog about national politics and issues. Holmes & Co. is a Blog for Independent Minds, a place for a free-flowing discussion of policy, news and opinion. This blog is the online cousin of the Opinion section of the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass. As such, our focus starts there and spreads to include Massachusetts, the nation and the world. Since successful blogs create communities of readers and writers, we hope the \x34& Co.\x34 will also come to include you.

For a while there, it looked like Anthony Weiner might actually convince a bunch of gullible New Yorkers that he was fit to be the next mayor of New York, just as Bob Fillner managed to deceive the folk of San Diego that he was fit to be mayor of that proud city. When Fillner was running for mayor, there was a general propensity to downplay the rumors of his antics in Washington D.C., and a perception, perhaps, that what happened in D.C. would stay in D.C., or maybe that so long as someone regrets their behavior and appears contrite, we the people are willing to forgive and forget. Except, that in these cases, there are two interesting problems.

First, these cases provide egregious examples of difficulty with personal judgment, in jobs in which judgment is deemed to be a key requisite for the job.

Second, it’s the municipality that tends to get sued when all goes wrong, and it costs the taxpayers money. For all the complaints about the Moral Majority and family values, perhaps this country has gone too far in the department of believing that being contrite is enough to give someone a second chance. For all the sense that we are living in a new and bolder world, there is no evidence that family values have changed. Maybe the definition of family has changed, but not the values.

I was getting a kick out of an interview I heard with two gay Republicans the other day. These men are devout Catholics, and they were lamenting the increase in gay divorce. My, how times have changed. For all of the talk of political power of immigrants and minorities, the United States remains a staunchly conservative, religious place. Those values matter when people go to vote, perhaps more than the color of their skin or the color of the skin of the candidate. Maybe Weiner and Fillner are just evidence of hubris, and not a dangerous disassociation between the Democrats and traditional values, but in a world where all politics are local, it’s still wise to keep one’s body parts in appropriate places.